By lunging for some quick prestige, Warner Brothers recorded the approach to the play taken by the esteemed emigre stage director Max Reinhardt in his famous production at the Hollywood Bowl a year earlier. The Reinhardt style was considered striking stuff in the mid-'30s -- today it comes across as a thoroughly traditional approach, with poetically blurred cinematography, twinkling stars, misty woods, fairies that flutter, trill and prance, Mendelssohn music, and heavy cutting of the text to allow time for musical interludes and assorted prancing through the greensward. It's respectful, entertaining and has some striking moments _ although it's not the classic the studio was obviously hoping for. Since Warners' contract roster wasn't exactly the Old Vic, the casting is hit and miss. The hits include James Cagney playing Bottom as an energetic, amiably clueless hambone; the beguiling and spirited Olivia de Havilland as Hermia (her film debut); Anita Louise as an angelically beautiful and graceful Titania; and Victor Jory's authoritative, rather sinister Oberon. As for the misses: Dick Powell and Ross Alexander's twerpy Lysander and Demetrius, and, Lord help us, Mickey Rooney as Puck _ after about five minutes of his braying, chortling and mugging, you start hoping W.C. Fields will show up.
Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream
